J.R. Smith furthered his NBA Sixth Man of the Year candidacy on Thursday with another solid performance and perhaps the best dunk of the season. Bruce Bennett/Getty Images

If you're trying to make any sense of this NBA season, you can go ahead
and stop.

The Knicks -- a team coming off losses to the Portland Trail Blazers and
Sacramento Kings -- beat the San Antonio Spurs at home, 100-83, on Thursday to
sweep the season series. Once again, the Knicks, who lost to the Houston
Rockets twice this year and who were playing their worst defense since before
Mike Woodson's arrival as an assistant, bludgeoned the Spurs, who Woodson
described as the best team in the NBA.

>In theory, Woodson is
correct. The 26-9 Spurs are an elite squad. But they're always thinking big
picture when the schedule works against them.

Last month Popovich sent
home Duncan, Parker, Ginobili and Danny Green in advance of a fourth game in
five nights, culminating with a matchup against the Heat in Miami on TNT. NBA
commissioner David Stern reacted by fining the Spurs $250,000.

On Thursday, Popovich
cleared his bench in the final 10 minutes after the Knicks had built a 17-point
lead en route to sweeping the season series against San Antonio.

San Antonio
forward Stephen Jackson suffered a sprained ankle and didn't return
to the game after tripping over a waitress crouching in front of Bloomberg
along the sideline during the Knicks' 100-83 win Thursday night over the Spurs
at the Garden.

Jackson misfired on a three-point shot from the corner opposite the
Knicks' bench in the first quarter. After making slight contact with Knicks
forward Amar'e Stoudemire, Jackson stepped backwards into the out-of-bounds
blue paint rimming the court.

The Knicks started Marcus Camby at power forward for the first time
this season, but it was his backup that most fans were focused on.

[Amar'e] Stoudemire had a
second straight ineffective performance with 10 points on 4-of-10 shooting and
two rebounds. Many of his inside attempts were rejected as he hasn't regained
his explosiveness. He played 20 minutes, 57 seconds — going in during garbage
time and going over the team's plan to limit him to 16 minutes.

As for Stoudemire's recent comment that he had never been taught how
to play defense -- a perceived slight of current Lakers coach Mike D'Antoni,
who coached Stoudemire with the Suns and Knicks -- D'Antoni responded on
Thursday.

Lakers Coach Mike D'Antoni responded
to Amar'e Stoudemire's comments after his team's practice Thursday. A day
earlier, Stoudemire said Mike Woodson was the first "defensive coach" in his
career. But rather than taking offense at Stoudemire's observation, D'Antoni,
who coached him for eight seasons with the Suns and the Knicks, congratulated
him on his new attitude. "I think it's great," D'Antoni said. "I think it's
great that he's listening. He might have forgotten that Mike Woodson was also
running the defense the last year I was there, so I don't know if he just didn't
pick that year to listen. But Amar'e's great. Sometimes you say things, but
hopefully, that's another step he can take forward and help his game. That
would be great."

In other Knicks news:

• The
Star-Ledger's Dave D'Alessandro pointed
out that the Knicks have been short-handed this year: "But as the nerves started to fray — and as Tony Parker
seemed poised to turn the Knicks' defensive paint into his private launching
pad — here's the only thing we wanted to know last night: How consistent should
a team be exactly, when it is missing three of its top nine players — a
handicap that this 22-10 team seems to face almost every night?... This isn't
to say that the Knicks don't have problems. It's just that most are related to
a depleted bench and the resulting fatigue that affects them at the defensive
end. They don't always compete for 48 minutes nowadays. And without Rasheed
Wallace, Iman Shumpert and Raymond Felton, they have become a substandard — if
not often poor — defensive team."

• As
NJ.com's Tony Williams wrote, the Knicks and the Spurs didn't play the
prettiest game on Thursday: "They didn't always
shoot particularly well, including a 39.5 percent showing in the first half,
but New York had the defensive clamps on San Antonio from the start. The Spurs
(26-9) shot just 36.4 percent from the field, including an atrocious 26.5 from
3."

• Botte
also wrote a piece supporting J.R. Smith's candidacy for the NBA's Sixth
Man of the Year: "Mike Woodson believes Smith (20
points) is emerging as a candidate for the NBA's Sixth Man of the Year award. 'Absolutely,
that was the whole idea coming into the season, putting him in a position ...
that he can lead the league or score a lot of points off the bench,' Woodson
said of Smith, who is averaging 16.6 and 5.2 rebounds per game. 'We're putting
him in a position to do that.'"

• The biggest difference on Thursday was the defensive play,
wrote
Newsday's Al Iannazzone: "The Knicks' defense had been slipping and they had been
starting games sluggishly. So Woodson made a change to the starting lineup,
putting Marcus Camby at power forward instead of Kurt Thomas. Camby had six
rebounds and a block in 16 minutes. But it was the Knicks' overall defense that
reappeared after Woodson showed the team tape of what it did earlier in the
season when it was first overall... 'He went back to our first 10-12 games or so
and was showing us how we were playing things,' said Tyson Chandler, who had 10
points and 14 rebounds. 'Guys kind of saw that and it motivated us a little
bit.'"

• Mark
Hale of the Post reported that Stoudemire felt more comfortable on defense
Thursday: "In his debut on Tuesday, Stoudemire
received a standing ovation when he entered, and last night he again heard
rousing cheers when he checked in with 6:30 to go in the first quarter, the
Garden crowd clearly pulling for Stoudemire to recapture his game... 'I felt much
more comfortable defensively,' he said. 'Offensively is gonna come. That comes
with just playing and repetition.'"

• ESPNNewYork.com's
Ian O'Connor thinks the Knicks are title contenders this year: "The
Knicks have size, a title-hungry superstar, lethal 3-point shooters, an
absurdly high IQ at the point (Prigioni is a poor man's Kidd), an explosive
bench player in the backcourt (Smith), a potentially explosive bench player in
the frontcourt (Stoudemire), and a coach who's connecting on a human level with
his players."